Ironically, coincidentally, serendipitously, “Red Sparrow” is still on the big screen as International Women’s Day rolls along – a celebration that “first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe.” [http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml] This year’s festivities are to be guided by the values of Justice, Dignity, Hope, Equality, Collaboration, Tenacity, Appreciation, Respect, Empathy, and Forgiveness. [https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Values]

For the value of Tenacity, we recall the contributions of code-breaker Rozanne Medhurst Colchester, Virginia “The Limping Lady” Hall, Vera Glass Leigh, Noor Inayat Khan, Agnès Dorothée Humbert, Marie Christine Chilver, Lise Marie Jeanette de Boucherville Baissac Villameur, Yvonne Claire Rudellat, and Sonia Olschanezky to the Allied victory in World War II. The women of the UK Special Operations Executive F Section “were recruited to serve in occupied France. They acted variously as couriers, wireless operators and saboteurs. They found places for planes to land, bringing more agents and supplies. They established safe houses and worked with resistance movements to disrupt the occupation and clear the path for the allied advance.” (Women: Special Operations Executive, www.parliament.uk)

“Those women did these things, given wartime pressures, after a very brief period of training. Apparently, they had each been told when recruited that there was only a 50 per cent chance of personal survival–yet, to their eternal credit, off they went. Some had been born in France, some in Britain, a couple in Ireland and some still further afield. Some were Jewish, some convent-educated, one Muslim. Some were already mothers, some just out of their teens; some shop assistants, some journalists, some wives; some were rather poor. In France, they often had to travel hundreds of miles by bike and train, protected only by forged papers, and as they went about their frequently exhausting work they were under constant danger of arrest by the Gestapo. Some were even exposed to betrayal by double agents and turncoats.” (Baroness Crawley, House of Lords Hansard, Volume 728, 06 June 2011)

“The story of what happened to some of those women is often unreadable and, in 21st-century Britain, is perhaps too easily under-remembered. A number were captured in France, horribly brutalized and sent to camps in Germany. There, the torment was often sustained over weeks and months on starvation diets, the women crammed in unsanitary and overcrowded huts with disease rampant. Four of them were killed in Natzweiler by being injected—scarcely credible as it is—with disinfectant. A number, once worked and beaten to a standstill, were shot and hanged at Dachau and Ravensbrück.” [https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2011-06-06/debates/11060612000140/Wo...

In the Philippines: Josefa Llanes-Escoda, Simeona Punsalan Tapang (“Kumander Guerrero” of HUKBALAHAP Squadron No. 104), Colonel Yay Panlilio (Marking’s Guerrillas), Felipa Culala (Kumander Dayang-dayang), Captain Nieves Fernandez (Black Army on Leyte), Elena Poblete (Kumander Mameng), and Raymunda Guidote (Abila) who was presented with the Philippine Legion of Honor award (degree of officer) by President Diosdado Macapagal for “exceptionally outstanding services to the Filipino people during the Japanese occupation.” [http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1964/11/02/official-week-in-review-oct...

For the value of Justice, “We call on the churches in Japan, on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of the world to appeal to the Japanese government especially through our sisters and brothers in Japan – so that an apology can be made to the ‘comfort women’ and that reparations is made to the sisters who have experienced this dehumanization through abuse and sexual slavery during the World War II.” [Dr. Isabel Apawo Phiri, Associate general secretary for Public Witness and Diakonia, World Council of Churches, 14 August 2014]

For the value of Empathy, we note the October 27, 2017 statement of the Japanese Committee for Joint Nomination to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register: “The content of the ‘Voices of Comfort Women’ nominated for the Memory of the World Register includes records of interviews with survivors of Japan’s military sexual slavery, records of their struggle for justice, and a collection of documents that establishes the facts of Japan’s military sexual slavery system. We believe that this set of records is of universal value concerning women’s human rights.” [Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, Shinjuku, Tokyo 169-0051 Japan]

On this matter, we wonder: Where is the Helpful Hito? Or the Gaijin Hunter? Too busy watching Japanese gravure idol Riyoko Takagi on YouTube? Be that as it may, we must cite: “Japanese feminists have pointed out that Japanese women who were forced to serve the army as prostitutes during the war were on the colonizers’ side as ethnic Japanese, but as women and members of the lowest classes they were, nevertheless, victimized in ways not much different from the abuse suffered by so-called comfort women from other parts of Asia.” (Ulrike Wöhr, “A Touchstone For Transnational Feminism: Discourses On The Comfort Women In 1990s Japan”)

Column of the Day

‘As an agency of the UN, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to fulfill its duties within the framework set out by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.’ – Chinese spokesman Lu Kang.

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